Paraguayan Guaraní reduplication: a novel prosodic analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v10i0.5452Keywords:
Guarani, reduplication, prosodic hierarchyAbstract
In contexts of reduplication in Paraguayan Guaraní [gug, Tupí-Guaraní, Paraguay], two syllables are copied.The position of the reduplicant is variable, but morphophonologically conditioned. With data from apparent
base-reduplicant mismatches, I evaluate three possible analyses of reduplication. Contrary to previous
accounts of reduplication in Tupí-Guaraní (Everett & Seki, 1985; Rose, 2005; Hamidzadeh, 2013), I argue
that the reduplicant in Paraguayan Guaraní is best analyzed as an infix: specifically, a suffix to the stressed
vowel. Reduplication in Paraguayan Guaraní is sensitive to stress assignment, which is determined by the
prosodic structure, and the reduplicant is a disyllabic suffix to a stressed vowel. The vowel to which the
reduplicant attaches may lie within any prosodic word: therefore, both attested and unattested types of
variability in reduplicant position fall out from this account. I additionally propose that synchronic variation
is evidence of an ongoing reanalysis of the position of the reduplicant in Paraguayan Guaraní from a suffix to
the stressed vowel towards a suffix to the prosodic word, in line with free suffix order in the language.
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Published
2023-05-13
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Published by the LSA with permission of the author(s) under a CC BY 3.0 license.